Okey Ndibe

Okey Ndibe is a novelist, political commentator, and essayist—and the author of the novel Foreign Gods, Inc., published in January, 2014 to great reviews in the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, National Public Radio, and Hartford Courant. Such major writers as Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel laureate in literature, John Edgar Wideman, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o have praised Ndibe’s creative work.

He began his career as a magazine editor in Nigeria, and then moved to the United States in 1988 to be the founding editor of African Commentary, a magazine published by the late novelist Chinua Achebe. He co-edited the essay collection "Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa". His weekly column is widely syndicated. He also contributes opinion essays to numerous journals, newspapers, and websites, including the New York Times, Al Jazeera Online, and BBC online.

Ndibe earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has taught at Brown University (in Providence, Rhode Island), Connecticut College (New London, CT), Bard College at Simon’s Rock (Great Barrington, MA), Trinity College (Hartford, CT), and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar).

He is working on Going Dutch and other American Mis/Adventures, a memoir about his life in the United States. His website is www.okeyndibe.com.

SaharaReporters.com is an outstanding, groundbreaking news website that encourages citizen journalists to report ongoing corruption and government malfeasance in Africa. Using photos, text, and video dynamically, the site informs and prompts concerned African citizens and activists globally to act, denouncing officially-sanctioned corruption, the material impoverishment of its citizenry, defilement of the environment, and the callous disregard of the democratic principles enshrined in the constitution.